<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Winter King by actuallyfeanor</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28734990">The Winter King</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/actuallyfeanor/pseuds/actuallyfeanor'>actuallyfeanor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Healing, Himring, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:54:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28734990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/actuallyfeanor/pseuds/actuallyfeanor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Maedhros had been many things. Accursed, reviled, doomed. Soldier, lord, king. Son, brother, heir. But first he was a storyteller.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Winter King</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted to Tumblr</p>
<p>
  <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/52972/in-a-beautiful-country">
    <i>then it is autumn in the body. your hands are cold. then it is winter and we are still at war.</i>
  </a>
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maedhros had been many things. Accursed, reviled, doomed. Soldier, lord, king. Son, brother, heir. But first he was a storyteller.</p>
<p>Where Fëanor could move mountains and start revolutions with his voice, where Maglor could wring tears from hearts of stone, where Celegorm spoke in the voices of bird and beast, and Curufin spun spells and glamours and lies, Maedhros had the gift of turning occurrences into events, lives into history.</p>
<p>By candlelight in Formenos, by campfires in the woods, he wove the strands of poetry, ancient legends, lines of song, together to form the tapestry of tales. His voice could roar like the waves and whisper like the wind, he was the damsel and the monster, the warrior and the crone. He thundered like mighty Manwë upon Taniquetil, he hummed lullabies rocking his brothers into Varda's gentle velvet night. He laughed like Tulkas and wept like Nienna.</p>
<p>Then he fell into darkness and rose from the iron hells, and his voice was a hoarse whisper, only his eyes told of the horrors he had seen. No tales were told in the fortress of Himring. Its winter king ruled in a silence that fell like snow upon frozen earth.</p>
<p>Until ...</p>
<p>There came a night, a winter night, when winds howled over the hills and the bare ground, when Eldar and Edain alike huddled around their watchfires and dreaded the wolves that howled in the dark.</p>
<p>And in the silence, the thousand-fathom deep silence of cold stone and empty halls, the lord of Himring spoke. His voice, no longer hoarse and faint, cut the night air like starfire. Of dark caverns, he spoke. Of iron and steel and the stench of blood and the screams in the night. Of cold blades and colder laughter. Of hunger and pain and hollowed-out hopes.</p>
<p>A razor-sharp thread it was, the tale that shimmered before the listeners. Glass and steel and ice, twisted back onto itself, woven into chains, into rusty nails, into instruments of torture. It was mesmerising, darkly and painfully mesmerising, suffocating and glorious at the same time.</p>
<p>But ice must thaw. Glass must shatter. It is in the nature of such things that they shall not endure infinitely. A hammer strike from the heavens, a ray of light piercing the darkness, hope finds a way. And as steel turned to feathers and ice to warm blood, the hearts of the listeners were filled with courage and cheer. Before their eyes, tragedy had become history, despair had been turned to victory.</p>
<p>For a good tale comes not from the absence of monsters, but from the conquering of them.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>